MOs and SDs could be described through several examples of situations from my environment and experience. As such, there was an event in my school life that made me put more value on education. Namely, I had an acquaintance who had graduated recently and managed to apply for a job as a researcher. I have had a conversation with this woman; she has been using coherent and concise sentences, as well as an extensive vocabulary, which impressed me. Moreover, she has described her field work for a study, which was a linguistic investigation of minorities in the US. As a result, she has compiled a paper about the stats of indigenous languages in the country and distinguished discriminatory policies that diminished the roles of these languages and communities. Consequently, this work has influenced the lives of some individuals since it has provided data for policymakers and allowed for changes to some more inclusive ones. This conversation made me think that academic practice is valuable for society and that I might engage in similar work to help people with my activity.
The described earlier example could be identified as an MO. In fact, the conversation with the scholar woman was an antecedent variable that influenced my value of education. The manner of talk, the narrative about the details, and, most importantly, the consequences of writing a paper have produced a reaction of impression in me. As a result, this reaction has become a reinforcement that determined the value of particular activity for me. Thus, I have changed my attitude toward education since I have realized that some award for it is available (the possibility to help people), which strengthened my motivation to get a higher education.
The following example is from my childhood and concerns my preferences in food. As such, I disliked vegetables, and being healthy was not enough motivation for me to eat them. My parents were concerned with this issue due to the fact that it had been continuing for a long time, and my dentist had described to them that problems with my teeth emergent at the moment were connected to the lack of a vitamin-rich diet. Hence, they decided to offer me the proposition supposing that if I consume at least one food item with vegetables daily in the course of a week, they will present me the toy that I had wanted. This proposal was met by me with enthusiasm, and I gradually began to eat vegetables often since my parents supported me with the presents as they had promised.
This example contains the use of SD as an antecedent variable. Namely, I have been presented an obvious award for appropriate behavior, which was eating vegetables and receiving gifts. The availability of the reinforcement, in this case, has influenced the discriminatory behavior: when choosing between consuming and rejecting vegetable food, I began to prefer the proper. Thus, there was a stimulus that signaled the reinforcement that altered my behavior, which is the occurrence of SD.
The last example is an observation made by me over the behavior of my friend. This person has been smoking for several years without any plan to quit this habit. However, there was an accident that made them rethink this problem. Namely, my friend has been regularly visiting his family friend, an older man and a convicted smoker. This man has been a comforting person for my friend since they had shared various interests. Yet, it happened that this man had left a lightened cigarette that set his house ablaze and damaged him as well. After watching the man with injuries in the hospital, my friend has decided to quit smoking.
This example illustrates MO occurrence with the antecedent variable of watching the suffering of a close person. In fact, this episode has made my friend to discriminate between smoking and quitting this habit by demonstrating the possible but not immediate reinforcement of their choice and future behavior. Thus, the negative experienced has altered the value that my friend has given to their behavior, motivating them to change it further, although there is no guarantee that smoking necessarily leads to injury.
References
Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2019). Applied Behavior Analysis (3rd Edition). Hoboken, NJ: Pearson Education.
Fisher, W. W., Fuhrman, A. M., Greer, B. D., Mitteer, D. R., & Piazza, C. C. (2019). Mitigating resurgence of destructive behavior using the discriminative stimuli of a multiple schedule. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 113(1), 263–277.
Poling, A., Lotfizadeh, A. D., & Edwards, T. L. (2019). Motivating operations and discriminative stimuli: Distinguishable but interactive variables. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 13(2), 502–508.